Editorial: Middle-class income uptick

Do you feel richer? The latest income and poverty report from the U.S. Census Bureau brought some unexpected good economic news, and not just to the wealthiest 1 percent. For the first time since 2007, according to the government agency, the U.S. median household income rose — and significantly, by 5.2 percent. That means the American household at the median — with half of the households wealthier and half poorer — brought in $56,516 last year, up from $53,718 in 2014. The number of Americans living in poverty declined by 3.5 million, to 43.1 million. As Paul Harrington, director of the Center for Labor Markets and Policy at Drexel University, noted in the Journal’s coverage of the Census Bureau report, “this is a big bump and it kind of came out of nowhere.” But of course,…